Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

January 27, 2026 - Genesis 23 & Psalm 20

• Josiah Smith - Compass Bible Church South Valley

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0:00 | 15:19

We read Psalm 20 as a pre-battle prayer and trace its call to put confidence in the Lord, then follow Abraham’s costly purchase of Machpelah in Genesis 23 as a tangible step of promise and honor for Sarah. We close by urging weary hearts to depend on God for today’s work and joy.

• Psalm 20 as a pre-battle prayer of dependence
• trusting God over skill, power, or strategy
• practical prayer for hard conversations and daily battles
• Sarah’s honored death and legacy of joy
• Abraham’s public purchase of Machpelah at full price
• a legal foothold in Canaan as promise in motion
• encouragement to pursue good works with God’s strength
• reminder that God keeps his promises

For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compassbiblesv.org. Keep reading. Keep growing. God’s Word is a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with God's word lighting the way. I'm Tyler Sanborn. Today is Tuesday, january twenty seventh, twenty twenty six. Listen intently to God's written word. Genesis twenty three. Sarah lived one hundred and twenty seven years. These were the years of the life of Sarah, and Sarah died at Kariath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The Hittites answered Abraham, Hear us, my Lord, you are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land, and he said to them, If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat me for Ephron, the son of Zoar, that he may give me the cave of Machpellah, which he owns. It is at the end of his field, for the full price, let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place. Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered, Abraham and the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of the city, No, my Lord, hear me, I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. In the sight of the sons of my people I give it to you, bury your dead. Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land, and he said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, but if you will hear me, I give the price of the field, accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there. Ephren answered Abraham, My Lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver. What is that between you and me? Bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. So the field of Ephron in Malkella, which is which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that is in it, and all the trees that were in the field, throughout its whole area, was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went in at the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpellah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites. May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May He send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion. May He remember all your offerings and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. May He grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions. Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed. He will answer him from his holy heaven and the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. O Lord, save the King. May He answer us when we call. Now, if you're thinking about a battle scene after listening to Psalm 20, you and I are in the same camp because this Psalm, Psalm 20, pairs with Psalm 21 and is a pre-battle, uh pre-battle call of prayer. And we look to the first five verses of Psalm 20 as an offering of prayer. David is is calling out to the God of his fathers, the God that uh promised uh and kept his covenants with his people. And we look at verse three and we see a heart that is worshipful, a heart that is reflecting on sacrifices that were uh made to God with with a heart that wants to worship and honor him. And the next section, we look at verses six through eight, and we see uh a remembrance and a confidence. You can look to Psalm 20 and see the battle primer, if you will. And it for us today, we can uh have different battles for sure than King David did, but we all really fight these battles and we have a choice to make. Where are we putting our confidence? Where are we putting our hope today? Uh, is it in our uh our skills, our trainings, our our intellect? Uh where are we putting our our confidence? And for David, uh his confidence is not in chariots, it's not in horses, it's not in a superior firepower, it's not in a superior intellect. Uh, verse 7, it's clear. We trust in the name of the Lord our God, and that's a great reminder for us. Uh, our confidence, though we might be skilled, though we might have uh a great mind to problem solve, our our confidence, even in our own understanding, our knowledge, our insights, our wisdom, comes from the Lord. Uh and this last section that we see in Psalm 20 is a declaration of dependence. And if I were to uh to rewrite um a script, uh rewrite a battle before uh a pre-speech battle, if you will, I would I would write it this way. We hold these spears in full dependence, that you hear us, Lord, when we call. Our ultimate trust is in you, the Lord our God, not in our training, not in our superior firepower strategy. Lord, if you do not go before us, we will be utterly defeated. You know our heart's desire, be our strength and our salvation this day, that we may raise the banner high for your name. Protect us, God, for your name's sake. Amen. And this is this could be a prayer that we have when we go into tough meetings, when we go into a hostile work environment, potentially. Um, maybe, maybe you need to pray something similar to this, going into a tough conversation with a coworker or maybe with your children or your spouse and say, Lord, uh, this isn't about winning. This isn't about uh me being right or having an upper hand. Lord, I want to honor you, I want to bring you glory, and I want to bring you praise through these tough times. I'm dependent on you. God help me not to lean in my my own strength or my my own understanding at every day. We battle, uh we battle the flesh, we battle the world, uh, and we battle these affections that stir up uh inside of us that come from uh human bodies that are still living in a fallen world. Though we do have the spirit as believers, we do have the presence of God dwelling inside us, we have the helper, we still fight this old, this old hardware that that we're bound in, and uh we need help, we need the Lord, and we need a mindset that is dependent and just confessing to the Lord that we need him to honor him, to glorify him, and to have victory over our sin each day. Now, as we transition from Psalm 20 to Genesis 23, we we look at Sarah and her death. Uh, and what is interesting here, right out of the gate, is that Sarah's age at her death is listed. This is unusual, and this is the only place that we can find in the scriptures that gives an age to a woman at her death. And this is uh an honor, uh a great honor for Sarah. And it we think back to the life of Sarah, we think back to her life and her uh her very old self, age 90, when she gives birth to Isaac, and and she lives another 37 years. Uh, and I'm imagining her um full of joy and full of laughter because of what what the Lord has done in her life. And that's a great reminder for us as we think about Sarah and Abraham and um the roller coaster of a life that they lived. We can look to Sarah and remember her later years and the honor that is given to her in scripture, and just remember we can we can laugh with the joy of the Lord. We can have a light spirit about us that is waiting and hoping and trusting in God to fulfill his promises. Uh, the majority of the rest of this chapter in Genesis 23 is is keying in on this transaction for a burial place for Sarah. And this is a this is uh an unusual um piece of um history that's recorded for us, and it's all about a transaction, it's all about a purchase, and uh the sojourning Abraham is looking for a place to bury his wife, and uh he doesn't want to bury his wife next to other uh Canaanites, he doesn't want to bury his wife next to to the Hittites. That there's a very generous offer that's made. It seems like there's a uh a free offering of uh a place for this this uh sojourner, this foreigner to bury his wife. But Abraham is is looking to uh to have a place that's not next to uh to a Hittite. He's wanting a place and he's calling a place, calling it out, and he's looking to pay for it. Uh he doesn't want a favor, he doesn't want an under-the-table deal. Uh Abraham is looking to have a proper place that is his and his alone to bury uh his family. And this is a place that later on in scripture will be the burial place for uh the rest of his family, for for himself, for Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, uh, and Jacob. And this is uh a great reminder as we think back to Genesis chapter 15 and and Genesis 15 verse 20. This this land of Canaan, this will, this piece of land will be given to it given to Abraham and his descendants. It is his, and this is one of the first steps that we can see of this wandering Abraham through the line of through the land of Canaan. He is taking these first steps that are fulfilling God's promise to him that his his uh descendants will have a land of their own. And this deal is done uh in front of witnesses, in front of a business place that is near the gate of the city. It wasn't a borrowed place, it wasn't lent to him. And like we said, it's not an under the table deal. This is um this is truly Abraham's, and he's paying 400 shekels, and it's a great reminder for us to look to scripture and say over the course of uh eight chapters, we see a promise given and a promise kept. Pastor Josiah has um has commented on that a handful of times so far in our uh in our podcast here for Lamp and Light and promises kept after promises uh spoken. And this is an encouragement for you and I to think about the things that we can sometimes lose in in the heat of of the day with life's trials, life's circumstances, we can lose sight of God's promises and the way that He is providing day by day for us. And this is a great encouragement that we can see though Abraham is is mourning, he's grieving, he's also reminded of the promises that God is keeping uh and how faithful his God is. So let today be a reminder if you're if you're tuning in this morning, if you're feeling tired, if you're feeling weary, maybe you had a really long weekend or you feel like you didn't have a weekend at all because there were so many um good things to accomplish, lots of good work. I want to just build you up and encourage you and remind you this morning that that God, the God of every gay uh every grace, is going to give us exactly what we need in order to accomplish the works that He would have for us today. And we can be encouraged and energized that these good works that that we're pursuing to give God glory, um, they're worth it. So go forward today in the joy of your salvation, remembering that God keeps his promises. Well, thanks for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast. For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org. Keep reading, keep growing. God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.